


Divine Madness

by AMarguerite



Series: A Passion for the Absolute [3]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: 1830s, Fights, M/M, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, Revolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-11
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-11 15:56:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3331172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For airandthought, who asked for Enjolras/Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac muses a little on the allegory of the chariot from Plato's 'Phaedo' and fights in the 1830 Revolution. Takes place in the same universe as 'A Passion for the Absolute.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Divine Madness

**Author's Note:**

> Blame Mary Renault's "Last of the Wine" for all the classical meanderings and the lovers-in-battle trope. Thank tumblr user feuillyova for the Yiddish folk song mentioned in the first paragraph. And if I've forgotten to thank anyone else, let me know and I'll be sure to thank them too.

There was a certain tension that Courfeyrac always associated with hearing the concert A of a bassoon- the long drawn out note that invoked the voices of all other instruments. The clanging of the tocsin was the only sound to rival it. It called so clearly he felt compelled to answer even when he could not consciously do so. At first Courfeyrac woke thinking it was only his upstairs neighbor banging on pots while singing another of her sad songs in some not-quite-Polish dialect, but then Courfeyrac realized it was too early for her to be singing. It was not one voice that called to him, but many. And that deep tolling noise, pulling him from half-formed dreams of Plato's republic, that was the tocsin.

Enjolras, who was a much earlier riser than Courfeyrac by far, was already up and knocking at the door.

"Haven't you a key?" Courfeyrac called out sleepily. His soul was rising in him though; he thought vaguely of a metaphor Jehan had of late, much embraced, of a chariot hitched to two winged horses. It was taken from Plato, Courfeyrac thought, still vaguely, and there was something about going in a circuit while the horses pulled in opposite directions.

Still, he had pulled all the curl papers from his hair and hidden them before Enjolras unlocked the door and came in, saying, "The printers are up in arms."

"What's happened?"

"Another ordinance."

It was a hot, dry summer. Courfeyrac had taken to sleeping with the windows open, and chants now floated up and into his window- a sweet summer breeze. He heard, " _Vive la Charte!_ "

Enjolras had been busy while Courfeyrac had been distracted; he unceremoniously dumped clothes onto the end of Courfeyrac bed. "Come."

"Now?"

Enjolras looked reprovingly at him, but it was the same expression of fond exasperation Courfeyrac was used to receiving.

"You can't expect much wit when it's too hot for coffee," Courfeyrac replied, tossing aside his bedsheet. "And I- what? What is all this?"

Courfeyrac despairingly held up black wool trousers (in the summer!) his best white waistcoat for balls, and an old shirt he only wore under a hunting tunic.

"Clothes," replied Enjolras. He was mentally already on the street, shouting with the others.

Courfeyrac shook his head, ran a careful hand through his curls (just enough so that they were Romantically tousled, not frizzy), and said, "My chief-" a half-joking nickname that made sense to no one but themselves, for 'mon chef' and 'mon cher' had no apparent relationship to anyone else "-it shocks me to the core to think you have seen me dress and undress so many times, and yet never understood how I put an outfit together. A dandy is a work of art." Then, a little playfully, "You are one no matter what you wear, but Nature is not so kind to all of us-"

"Far be it from me to rush art," said Enjolras, already at the window, though he turned with a smile to Courfeyrac, "but fifty journalists at _Le National_ have vowed to defy the ordinance, and there are mobs of unemployed workers everywhere. We must lend our voices to theirs."

Courfeyrac took out a proper outfit for the summer heat while Enjolras explained all he had heard, and even has time for his usual, fastidious ablutions.

"--like Poland."

"I see you ran into Feuilly again."

"He is out of work." Enjolras was half standing, half leaning against the window ledge and watched Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac turned to his shaving mirror, gently moving the knot in his cravat. Enjolras said, in his dry way of showing affection, "You will only loosen it as the day gets warmer, or use it for bandages."

Enjolras had himself negligently looped his cravat about his neck, like Marat in his portrait. (His fully clothed portrait, Courfeyrac mentally amended. Even Marat at his most eccentric would not have worn a cravat into his bath.)

"I will not fling myself into a revolution without a cravat that would do honor to Saint-Just," objected Courfeyrac. "Come, my chief, I apply to you for clemency in this one respect. Besides, I keep the bullet molds in my cravat drawer."

“That may excuse the existence of a cravat drawer,” said Enjolras, with the same dry playfulness, “but you are not busying yourself with the drawer, but the contents least necessary to the day’s tasks.”

Courfeyrac clutched at the now-perfect knot of his cravat. “How can you say such a thing! Particularly since you were just telling me I would have to use it for bandages! I am wounded, deeply wounded. I shall have to keep my cravat on all day to staunch so deep a wound.”

Enjolras came over and flicked the hair out of Courfeyrac’s eyes, half an acknowledgement of Courfeyrac’s need to be perfectly dressed before facing death and injury again, half a teasing reprimand for it, wholly a gesture as meaningful and as casual as an ‘I love you’ would be to anyone else. Enjolras never spoke his love, nor showed it the way Courfeyrac did, in quips and flirtation, but Courfeyrac never had had cause to complain of feeling ill-used or unloved.

“Where is your carbine?” asked Enjolras.

Courfeyrac, wishing still to tease him a little, instead produced a sword-cane.

“Very nice,” said Enjolras, not so much smiling as suppressing it. “Let us hope you have pistols stashed in your waistcoat drawer.”

“And spoil the silk with gunpowder? No! I keep them in the laundry hamper.”

 

***

 

As it turned out, Courfeyrac was still perfectly dressed (if a little dusty) when at 7:00 pm commanders of the troops of the First Military division of Paris and the royal guard turned their guns on the Tuileries. Ostensibly it was to stop looting, but no Parisian had yet tried to loot anything but gun shops and ammunitions stores.

Enjolras was a point of unmovable calm in the screaming, shouting crowd about him. Courfeyrac darted in and out of the crowd, as if cutting through the crush of a ballroom to stand by his side.

"Bossuet is injured," said Enjolras, with a glance over his shoulder, where Joly and Bossuet knelt behind him. Courfeyrac slid between a printer lunging for a guard to take his place at Enjolras's left. Combeferre, trying to usher Feuilly towards them, through the chaos, was aiming for Enjolras's right.

It was now raining flowerpots and roof tiles on the advancing guard; Enjolras called out to Combeferre, "Meet us by the oak tree." Then, turning to Joly: "Can Bossuet be moved?"

"He's awake, just dazed," replied Joly. "I can-"

Bahorel materialized. A man so large should not have been able to move so silently, thought Courfeyrac, before a sabre came at him and cut off that train of thought. Courfeyrac drew his sword from his cane, managing to check the motion of the sabre with the flat of his own blade. The rest of the match was swift; Courfeyrac would not move from Enjolras's side, or from in front of where Bahorel stooped to help pull Bousset upright, and the Guardsman was buffeted on all sides. A falling flowerpot ended the match in Courfeyrac's favor.

The guardsman fell, newly crowned with violets. Courfeyrac thought of Jehan.

"A divine madness," roared out Bahorel. "It's a pity Grantaire is drunk, he could give us a paen on Dionysus."

"I want no battle madness," said Enjolras. 

"Ah yes, let Athena be your guide," replied Bahorel. "All logic and justice-- that is fine for you, but to be at all effective I need a little divine madness about me."

"'Divine madness' is usually reserved for Apollo in prophesy, the muses in poetry, Dionysus in mystic rites, and Aphrodite in love," objected Combeferre. "Athena offers wisdom, not madness."

But the debate could not continue; the royal guards were regrouping and firing.

As Courfeyrac walked backwards, sword brandished, half an ear on Bahorel’s roaring charge to the oak tree, he noticed the guards had the same idea that they did: get away from the buildings full of people dropping things on the people below.

Though Courfeyrac knew the soul-chariot of winged horses was a metaphysical conceit, an allegory meant merely to illustrate the competition between impulse and intellect, he rather wished it was literal. It would be so handy to summon up two winged horses in times of trial, even if they were wont to fly in opposite directions.

He sensed checked motion behind him- Enjolras's hand was on his shoulder- "Watch here, Bahorel has stumbled over some paving stones-"

"I will never let him forget it," said Courfeyrac, eyes on the guards rushing confusedly at the crowd. "The mighty Bahorel, felled by his ancient foe- to the right!"

Enjolras's hand slid away, but his back was to Courfeyrac's now, and the guard charged past without striking Enjolras.

In the quiet exultation in the safety of a loved one, Courfeyrac neglected to watch for himself. He didn't see the mounted guard galloping at them until the sabre was nearly at his face. He raised his own sword-parried with a strength born of panic- forced the guard to lose his balance and nearly fall. The horse shrieked loudly in Courfeyrac’s ear.

Enjolras's back was solidly against his own; Courfeyrac pressed against it for stability, out of breath, heart racing from exertion, mind racing with thoughts of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. How noble a thing- two lovers- of liberty and each other- a solid, united force against tyranny-

-the horse was within reach- Courfeyrac lunged  forward with a downward sweep of his sword, slicing through the strap of the saddle. The guard, already off balance, tumbled to the ground. The spur of his boot caught on the sleeve of Courfeyrac's outstretched arm, tearing the fabric, gouging the underside of Courfeyrac's forearm.

Courfeyrac drew back with a Provençal oath, out of the way of the charging horse. He cradled his bleeding sword arm against his chest.

He had been injured before and been injured far worse, but by God his arm hurt. Courfeyrac felt the movement of Enjolras's shoulders against his back and tried to draw courage from it. Against the pain he waded up vague memories of classical Greece, of lovers fighting side by side in battle. He had faced death before, in more terrifying and ignoble circumstances; this was nothing compared to last year. But still he began to feel pulled in two directions: to stay and fight and risk all by Enjolras’s side, or to run, and run far from the dark, imprisoning memory of pain. He had come so near death he never wished to experience it again. The pain that blocked out all else- the deep uncertainty, the terror that not even a priest could eradicate-

Enjolras had noticed his stillness and called over his shoulder, “Courfeyrac?”

Courfeyrac looked at the gash on his arm. The struggle between his impulses resulted in a spurt of inappropriate gaiety. “Look Enjolras, I have been forced by the guard to bare arms!”

Enjolras turned, looked at the bloodstain creeping outwards from the tear in Courfeyrac’s light-colored summer coat, and put an arm around Courfeyrac’s shoulders. “Combeferre will treat it-- how do you feel?”

“I’m in mourning for the loss of my favorite summer coat. I don’t suppose the blood will ever quite wash out.”

But the flippancy was reassuring; Enjolras briefly squeezed his shoulders before they ran on through the crowd.

"What's the allegory of the charioteer from?" Courfeyrac asked, a little at random, before thinking, 'God I hope he does not think me delirious again.'

But there was a black horse and a white horse dead before them; Bahorel, with ruthless practicality, had made a barricade of them.

Enjolras saw all about him as their usual useful symbols and replied, with perfect equanimity, though they were now leaping over the horses, "Plato's _Phaedrus_."

"Oh yes," said Courfeyrac, thoughts now fixed upon his wound. Combeferre saw and motioned he would be over in a minute, once he had finished with Bahorel and Bossuet.

Enjolras asked, "What, do you feel your soul leaving you? Are the two horses pulling you in opposite directions?"

It was a joke, thought Courfeyrac, delighted. This was surely his influence on Enjolras. He finished rolling up coat and shirt sleeve and displayed the gash to Enjolras. "No- it is not deep, but it is ragged." Courfeyrac began to reach for his cravat, mourning Enjolras's prescience."Your divine madness is not from Dionysus, but Apollo."

"Let me," said Enjolras, pulling off his cravat and binding the wound with a preciseness that Courfeyrac could only attribute to Combeferre's influence. Then, the words as gentle as a caress, "Why ruin a work of art?"

Courfeyrac felt a spark of the divine madness himself; an overwhelming rush of pure feeling that defied all description, a disproportionate response to something very small and very simple. His divine madness was not from Dionysus or Apollo, and Courfeyrac had no talent for poetry, which ruled out the muses. It was Aphrodite. 

His chariot was yoked; the horses pulled together. Despite all the pain of dying, it was better to die in battle with a lover, thought Courfeyrac, but how much better to live, and live free.


End file.
